ARTIST TALK WITH OANH PHI PHI

Walking in to the glowing chamber of Oanh Phi Phi’s pictorial installation called Specula is an experience that transports the viewer into another world. You walk slowly through this dome-shaped tunnel and your movement casts differing light levels on its walls. As a consequence the patterns that mark its lacquer skin refracts in differing hue, a sensation made all the more palpable as the frosted glass floor you are standing emits its own warmth. It feels like an organ of a body. Sitting adjacent to this work is Palimpsest, a series of what Phi Phi terms ‘Lacquerscopes’, where images of lacquer ‘skin’ is variously projected on the wall from metal stands that subsequently become personified, as if they are rare anthropomorphic machines with multiple eyes. The viewer here becomes a kind of explorer, where the light emitting from these sources lends life to the weight, form, and scale of this exhibition. Here lacquer is transformed beyond its physicality, there is an immersive science to the work, where one’s desire to touch, to understand, to hold is palpable.